‘I hit it with one of those shovels,’ Frank explained, keeping his own course doggedly, ‘and I knocked it on its end, the tea-chest I mean, and a lot of rubbish fell out, paper hats, you know, and decorations and that wand the fairy princess used and I saw a lot of money.’
‘A spider, a big big spider,’ Savage mimicked Frank’s soprano. ‘Andhe lost the heid. I wonder what he would have done if he’d saw one of the rats from the other end up there.’
‘What do you mean, a lot of money?’ Percy asked anxiously. There seemed no escape from dreams of money and talk of money.
‘Pound notes and five-pound notes,’ said Frank. ‘I told Specky. And bags of silver, paper bags and cloth bags, you couldn’t count it. I told Specky at playtime and we came down here after four by the door in the basement to make sure. I couldn’t believe it, I thought maybe it was stage money, but there was too much of it. You couldn’t spend it in years. You remember Miss Elginbrod put on a play about a millionaire that tried to give all his money away in an Alpine village but nobody would take it because they were happier without money. That’s why I thought it was stage money at first. Then I wanted to tell the cops and Sheuch says I was going to break the law you gave us but I would have shared the reward with everybody here, honest I would, cross my throat and spit!’
He went through the actions in his excitement.
‘But Specky said no, report it here,’ he concluded, exhausted by his ordeal. ‘He’ll tell you that’s how it was, you ask him!’
Specky rose from the coal-scuttle, bowed to Percy, turned and bowed to the Brotherhood and went into the witness-desk as willingly as Frank left it. He was going to enjoy this. He liked speaking. He would show them how a formal report ought to be made.
‘Probationer Garson reported to me at afternoon interval,’ he began benignly, ‘that he had seen millions and millions of pounds under the costumes in the tea-chests. He requested me to accompany him in a further visit to procure verification. Immediately following the dismissal of afternoon school we therefore descended together to our present location via the door in the basement when the janny’s back was turned and I personally inspected the receptacles indicated. I ascertained they contained money and I came to the conclusion that the money was genuine currency. However, I differed from Probationer Garson in my estimate of the amount. According to my calculations there are not millions and millions of pounds there at all. There are only—’
‘I didn’t mean millions and millions as millions,’ Frank interrupted him resentfully, clenching his fists to keep his temper. ‘I meant a lot, that was all.’
‘At a tory estimate,’ Specky proceeded, pleased at the chance to use a long-hoarded synonym, ‘I would say there are only thousands of pounds dispersed in three of the six receptacles referred to.’
‘What’s the game?’ Percy asked, wondering whether to be angry with them for trying to kid him or just laugh it off. ‘What are yous up to now?’
‘It isn’t a game, Regent Supreme, sir,’ Specky replied respectfully. ‘It’s true, I’m afraid. When I had made a provisional count of the contents of the first receptacle and then discovered that there was another two also containing money I abandoned the count and summoned an Extraordinary General Meeting in virtue of the powers vested in me as High Claviger. Chief Claviger Savage proposed immediate equal division of the money but I vetoed that in accordance with the constitution as laid down by the Regent Supreme, that is yourself, sir.’
‘You couldn’t divide it,’ Frank complained direct to Percy, appealing to him with his hands clasped in prayer. ‘And even if you could you couldn’t spend it. We’d be found out, bound to be! We’d all be in trouble. Please, Percy, tell the cops! Please!’
‘I myself told Chief Claviger Savage equal division was out of the question,’ Specky said with condescending calm to belittle Frank’s hysteria, ‘but he wouldn’t agree. He even proposed to expel Probationer Garson for treason but I opposed that too and said it was a matter for the Regent.’
Percy bowed in regal acknowledgement. He was trying to think, and the chattering in front of him only confused him. There seemed to be something ominously true in what Frank and Specky were telling him, and in that case he must take charge and be cool, calm and collected. He mustn’t get excited, and yet he felt his leg tremble under the weight of his elbow as he resumed his thinker’s pose. The chattering became a clamour.
‘Silence!’ he shouted, in a temper with them.
‘Permission to speak, please!’ Skinny called out, his right hand high.
Percy grunted permission. He must keep patient and listen and try to think at the same time. It was difficult for him. Why was it, he wondered, that some folk were born with a quick brain, shrewd customers, fly men; and better folk needed time and privacy to work things out? Where was the justice or equality in that? But he knew enough to know that silence can be mistaken for wisdom and that nothing is so infectious as panic. So he held his tongue and put on an air of indifference.
‘The majority decision of the Clavigers was to refer the matter to you,’ Skinny started, taking Specky’s place behind the desk, ‘because your father had charge of the cellar and you’re your father’s heir, so if the money in those chests belonged to your father then legally it’s yours, and there was nobody else looked after the cellar, so it must have belonged to your father.’
‘Ach, don’t be daft, Skinny!’ Frank shouted. ‘You’ve seen what’s there. Percy’s father never had that kind of money, never, never, never!’
Skinny turned from addressing the chair to argue with his subordinate.
‘How do you know? That’s for Percy to say. Percy knows what his father had, you don’t. Percy’s the boss, it’s no’ you!’
‘Well, I like that!’ Frank screamed. ‘It’s me that’s been arguing Percy’s the boss, and now you try and tell me!’
Percy felt the first throbbings of a headache. It was the frequency of his headaches, beginning just after he left school, that made him suspect he was an intellectual. They were probably due to the abnormal activity of his brain.
‘You’ve always said you should have had money if you had your rights,’ Skinny turned back to the chair, ‘so maybe this money is your inheritance, maybe that’s why you could never find the money you knew your father ought to have left you if you were to be a great man because that’s where he had hidden it.’
‘Yes, could be,’ said Percy, too overwhelmed to dispute the point. ‘Let me see what yous are all talking about.’
He came clumsily down from Miss Elginbrod’s chair and the Clavigers dragged the three lower tea-chests out of the darkness into the candlelight.
‘That’s how they were, with the three other chests on top of them,’ said Frank ‘and there was all those costumes on top of the money but we put everything back just as it was to keep it hidden.’
Specky, Skinny and Savage pulled out concert costumes, Christmas party decorations and brown paper from the first chest, and Percy stooped over it when they gestured him to look inside. He fumbled out a bundle of notes with an elastic band round them and flipped it through with dumb awe.
‘Those are all fivers,’ said Frank helpfully. ‘But there’s singles as well there, and the bags with the half-crowns and the florins is in the middle one.’
Percy slouched round the other chests and examined them perfunctorily. The money was real. There was no doubt in his mind. And when the three chests were emptied of all the rubbish crammed in them to reveal the money underneath he saw that the bottom of each was covered with notes an inch deep. He felt slightly sick, much as he had felt when an old man in Packing and Dispatch had taken him into a pub and made him drink a pint of beer one night after they had been working late, and there was a quivering and a fluttering in his stomach.
‘Cover it up again,’ he said,